Kathryn Reklis
Assistant Professor
Duane Library 134
(718) 817-3258
kreklis@fordham.edu
Education
Ph.D. - Yale University
M.A. - Yale University
M.A.R. - Yale Divinity School
B.A. - University of North Carolina
Research interests
Modern Protestant theology (18th century to the present); modernity/postmodernity and religion; postcolonialsim and the circum-Atlantic; theory and method in the study of religion; theological aesthetics; theology, religious practice, and popular culture.
Dr. Reklis is a historical and constructive theologian whose work is situated in the field of early modern and modern Protestant theology, particularly around questions of aesthetics and embodiment in the Reformed tradition. Her first book-length project lays the groundwork for a theology of culture traced through bodily gesture using colonial theologian Jonathan Edwards and the public debates around the ecstatic and excessive bodily performances of 18th century religious revivals as a case study. Situating Edwards in conversation with discourses about the making of modernity in the 18th century also relocates North American Reformed theology in its circum-Atlantic context, a context that describes the exchange of goods and ideas in circulation from Europe, Africa, the Caribbean and the Americas that created the material conditions for modernity.
A second project building on the first will explore how and why theologians in late modernity (20th century to the present) turn to aesthetics (beauty), bodily experience, and desire (erotics) as a means of reviving theological discourse, or saving theology from its own uneasy collusion with the projects of modernity.
Her interest in aesthetics, culture, and material history come together in several extracurricular projects. She is a Research Fellow for the New Media Project at Union Theological Seminary, where she
blogs regularly on theology, religious practice, and new media use. She is Co-Director of the
Institute for Art, Religion and Social Justice, which she co-founded in 2009 with artist AA Bronson. And she is a regular contributor to the “On Media” column for The Christian Century. She co-founded and continues to run a blog on theology and popular culture,
The Moth Chase.
Selected Publications
“Nothing But the Blood: What Vampires Can Teach us about Consumer Capitalism and Human Desire,” Sojourners (forthcoming August 2012).
“Art, Religion, and Social Justice,” Sensational Religion: Sense and Contention in Material Practice. Edited by Sally Promey, Yale University Press (forthcoming).
“The Choreography of Feminist Theology,” Reflections, Spring 2011, Vol. 98 Number 1, p 38-41.
“Heroism in the Age of Terror: the Dark Knight of the American Soul” in Religious Faith, Torture, and Our National Soul. Edited by David P. Gushee, J. Drew Zimmer, and Jillian Hickman Zimmer. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2010.
“A Sense of the Tragic in a Christian Theology of Freedom,” Theological Studies, Mar 2009, Vol. 70 Issue 1, p 37-60.
“Prime Time Torture,” The Christian Century, 6/3/2008, Vol. 125 Issue 11, p 11-12.
Courses
SPRING 2013
THEO 1000-R20: Faith & Critical Reason, MR 11:30-12:45
THEO 3834-L01: Christian Thought and Practice III, MR 2:30-3:45 (Lincoln Center)
FALL 2013
THEO 3834-R01: Christian Thought & Practice III, MR 11:30-12:45
THEO 5301-R01: History of Christianity II, M 5:15-7:45
